South Africa’s 10 most influential political tweeters [Infographic]

Twitter matters. There’s no doubting that. It can help effect social change, make stars, or pariahs, out of politicians, and make or break a brand. Makes sense then that mattering on Twitter also matters.

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But who matters? In South African politics, the most influential people on the social network turn out to be a mix of politicians, journalists, activists and academics.

At least, that’s according to a list compiled by PR and communications company Burson-Marsteller. The company compiled the list using Klout as a standard of measurement. Klout analyses engagement across social networks and creates a Klout Score based on this data to help users understand and unlock their influence.

As the list shows, Klout isn’t all that interested in the number of followers you have, but rather how you engage and what topics you engage on.

“South Africa is rated as the 10th largest user of Twitter in the world and the most avid Twitter user on the continent. On a global scale the political landscape has identified Twitter as means to engage the community and shape online debate. Locally, however, political leaders are behind their global counterparts and aren’t as actively engaged on this media,” said Hemant Lala, managing director at Arcay Burson-Marsteller.

Afrikaner singer Steve_Hofmeyr has more than 3,327 Tweet followers and 137,539 Facebook followers. The Afrikaner community has about 3,5million people. Hofmeyr’s daily stream of tweets keeps him in touch with his fans and also sends his Afrikaner-patriotism far and wide.

Guest

I agree with the article though Klout is very flawed. I once made a joke about a celeb which was retweeted and according to Klout, I am an “expert” on this celeb even though I have only Tweeted abut them once.

Riaan

I’m amazed that Zuma makes this list — his account may have more than 100,000 followers, but he (or his minions) have only tweeted four times this year, for example. Not much “klout” there, I’d say.

http://twitter.com/RogerFreeman9 Roger Freeman

Preposterous @Julius_s_Malema should be top. 160865 followers and huge number of retweets. Though not a verified account which may explain the absence

Travis

This is a really flawed piece of research. Most of the “tweeters” here barely tweet, and at least one of them is a parody account, while another has a mere 82 followers! How are we supposed to take this seriously?

AndrewRose

Was keen to follow Bobby Godsell, but see that his latest tweets are about “sunrises in Moscow”, what he “had for breakfast in Moscow” and so on, and then I stopped scrolling. Pretty mundane for such a great thinker who could have so much influence.
Jonathan Jansen is my man … when he tweets, I know its worth reading ..!

CecilCurrie

Very few of the top ten actually tweet regularly, and when they do, many times it is nonsensical. There are far more people in South Africa that have a far better following, tweet more regularly on topics that matter. The research that established the top ten is seriously flawed

Ralph Mathekga

I hardly tweet: I have the least number of followers on twitter, strange!
Ralph Mathekga

Who ARE these people? Have never seen their tweets or even RTs of their tweets. What research went into the building of this “top ten” list???

Anonymous

Interesting reactions, including by Ralph Mathekga. Hoping this is the official account? What I like is that some of the comments seem to indicate ppl tested the validity of the report. Forces us bloggers to make sure our “facts & stats” are in order, before we publish them.